Well, it happened. Due to some terribly insane surge in workplace cases, I decided to help out for the next two months. This probably means I won't be updating this blog until July says bye instead of hi.
At the same time, High Isle will come out on 6th June. This means I'm going to spend quite a bit of time running through the new zones, doing quests, and playing Tales of Tribute. Not to mention as well rap building for the new companions. And yes, sealing all the Mount Fujis as well. Who would have imagined volcanic activities beyond Morrowind? Then again, Japan isn't the only nation with volcanoes.
Basically, this post is bibimbap of different stuff.
Analysing stuff
I still don't know how Pastor Lee and Mr Chin knew my penchant for analysing things and posting them on Facebook. In case you've yet to notice it, Twitter is never constructive for analysis. There could only be two possibilities: Either they knew I was masquerading as Pang Tong and Fa Zheng or there's a secret stalker/admirer/guardian/Xi Shi in the church.
As for Ryan, I didn't recall saying I was an honest person. I still remember that was a YAF program taught by Mr Lee (i.e. before he was ordained as Pastor Lee) stressing the importance of affirming people (i.e. no one can say people aren't capable of being terrible because we really are). So what was Ryan's affirmation to me? My honesty. I'm never the most honest person in the world, but I can assure everybody I'd never say I'm honest. So who told Ryan that? And he's not the only one saying that. It's baffling. I'm not Pang Tong or Fa Zheng, but I don't need the calibre of Liu Bei's strategist to know how Ryan expresses himself. If Ryan doesn't talk like Ryan, it means something isn't right. In this case, Ryan clearly didn't talk like Ryan. In fact, Ryan admitted that he's never good at affirming others. And I knew why he said that.
So why do I have the urge to analyse things all over the world? Hero worship is not recommended especially in the light of the SBC sexual abuse scandal, but it's true I admired three senior individuals in my church for their willingness to challenge the narrative and speak as if they knew what they were talking about. The impact left by Mr Soh, Mr Lee, and Mr Tay still remain in me. Is it a sin to challenge the narrative? Only if you don't know the common ground between mainstream media and alternate media. The whole thing, to put it in hyperbolic form, was like pursuing the shadows of the Three Heroes of Early Han. No one in my schooling days had been so inspiring, hence my hyperbolic praise.
So does acting on the urge of analysing things make me a henjin? Well, the answer would be yes. As a certified henjin, I don't have to deny being one. It's not that I'm extraordinary. I'm just... well, idiosyncratic. But give me a choice between surviving like an animal and living as a henjin? I'd take the henjin option, thank you very much.
Translating (into) English on Facebook
Don't ask me how I stumbled upon this. You wouldn't want to and I don't want to explain myself until the cow comes home. It's going to be a nightmare for someone ten times more capable of expressing himself in written words than spoken speech.
I recently came across an interesting aspect of politicians of non-English speaking descent interacting with their followers on Facebook. Not every politician is Lee Hsien Loong, Boris Johnson, or Joe Biden. We also have Volodymyr Zelensky, Kishida Fumio, and Yoon Suk-Yeol. When you look at anything written by PM Lee (or his wife as well for that matter), there's no translation dropdown user interface. Why? Because they're of English speaking descent. Actually, all we Singaporeans are.
But what if there's this drop-down user interface? In this case, we have two possible situations:
1. You'll see the post in its original text and equally original language. By original language, I clearly don't mean the likes of 死に頃.
2. You'll see the translated post with the original text viewable via the dropdown user interface. Interestingly, the FB mobile platform would reveal both since the mobile format seems to function differently from the desktop version (e.g. whether you can detect a comment was hidden or deleted).
For the sake of convenience, let's call the first possibility Route A and the second one Route B.
Why are there two different routes of reaching out? When you see a post, the first impression counts unless your post is of an edited photo without telling people it's edited. If Route A implies reaching out to a local audience, then Route B would be reaching out to an international audience. The usage of the dropdown box would be more of a necessary formality for Route A. But for Route B, is it the same? It depends on the context of the post. If we're talking about sharing a link which is in the original language, that'd imply the audience to be both the locals and diaspora. Autotranslation is never an option. The last time I came across news of autotranslation, the Osaka Metro effectively became a meme.
There's such a thing called growing your personal brand. This is not your grandchildren's social influencer playground, this is your grandparents' political marketing. In the world of social media gone global (and equally insane), the need to interact with locals and diaspora is very real. If you don't grow your brand, your career progress would be harder because everyone else is jumping onto the bandwagon. Even the PAP which used to be wary of social media during the GE 2011 is now using it.
Interestingly, it seems that heavyweight politicians are now using Route B more often than Route A. I did a bit of "investigation" and the results are surprising. For President Zelensky, it's natural for his FB page to feature the Route B posts 99% of the time due to the current war. For PM Kishida, he's not that far off. Around 80% by my guess. For President Yoon, he's surprisingly homogenous at an estimated 60% although it must be stated his inauguration was less than a month ago. Reaching out to both the locals and diaspora is to grow their personal brand. Circumstantially, you can say it's creating positive PR. Psychologically, it may be a show of ambition depending on the person. Despite what you may think due to social influencers and celebrities, marketing isn't an obscenity. At least not by default.
Note: Above post is brought to you by courtesy of Henjin Inc.
Should I have done this sooner?
Closer to home literally, there's playing ESO. I admit I've gotten too dogmatic on using the Backstabber CP due to the 15% additional critical damage (going down to 10% in the next patch). One thing about dealing DoT damage is that Thaumaturge does make a very big difference. Without it, your DoT damage is going to result in a DPS deficit in any group run. Recently (ok, not so recently), I decided to revert to using full Ilambris for my Magicka Sorcerer main. The initial assumption was that the DPS would be better than the two previous builds involving Ring of the Wild Hunt and full Slimcraw respectively. However, things didn't seem to turn out that well.
This was when I decided to ditch Backstabber. The assumption of using Thaumaturge over Backstabber was down to two things:
1. Ilambris proc is DoT damage, hence I need Thaumaturge to even things out.
2. The build I'm currently running should be more on consistent damage than critical damage despite a critical chance of 54% or so. This is due to how Ilambris function with either morph of Force Shock (i.e. 66% chance to proc=insanity).
At the same time, I'm running Crushing Shock (because Force Pulse won't affect the primary target) with Degeneration (for the Major Sorcery) and Crystal Fragments with Bound Aegis, Camouflage Hunter, and the Greater Storm Atronach ultimate (i.e. this is the front bar). This means I'm doing DD-DoT hybrid damage build with a focus on maximised Ilambris proc.
Currently, I've only run through a veteran non-DLC dungeon since I respec my main. However, the results were exceptionally good to the point of surreality. Why surreality? This was due to running it with a Necromancer of post-1800 CP. I'm not an elitist as in I don't believe having a higher CP means having an advantage where myself is concerned. But if the other person has the higher CP, I'd take notice. Truth to be spoken, I went in without expectations. Then the next thing I realised, I out-DPS'ed the Necromancer. The surreal part came in the form of 54% DPS. Even today, I still can't believe myself the インポシブル can be made ポシブル. While it remains to be seen in the longer run, I believe I might have done something which should have been done in the first place. With that being said, I suspect it's Degeneration making this insanity possible. Seriously, it feels truly insane.
Moral of the story: Ilambris isn't for everyone. Don't believe me, go ask Alcast.
Note: Is it possible to use Ilambris without Degeneration? Assuming it's something like Crystal Fragments, Crushing Shock, Haunting Curse, Bound Aegis, and Camouflage Hunter with Flawless Dawnbreaker ultimate, I wouldn't be surprised if Nerien'eth would be a better choice.
Fun Fact 1: My Khajiit alt is now running on Crushing Shock with Harpooner's Wading Kilt on a 5-piece medium and 2-piece light. It's quite easy to push up the critical chance and critical damage for a catblade build if you can spec the critter right complete with the Shadow Mundus stone effect.
Fun Fact 2: I always relish running a veteran dungeon with a Necromancer as the other DPS for a reason. It's called a worthy challenge. For some reason, I don't have a good head-to-head DPS record with Necromancers with Nightblades being the other bunch.
Plans for Update 34
My plan is to run High Isle with all my toons. Right now, my Khajiit alt is in the middle of doing the Craglorn storyline while my High Elf alt should be able to enter the Systres fray soon since she already cleared all the POI quests in Summerset with the storyline quests left. For my Dark Elf main, he's definitely the first to go. And besides, he already established a close friendship with Jakarn starting from their hijinks in Stros M'kai. For my Orc Nightblade, he's raring to go since starting Morrowind can wait (i.e. I ran that with 3 toons out of 5). My Breton Warden is the slowest in progress since the plan was to finish all the POI quests and main storyline for the entire Daggerfall Covenant maps (I managed to achieve this in Aldmeri Dominion maps for my Khajiit alt). Of course, I may do a U-turn since I already did that for my Dark Elf main (i.e. he's part of the Covenant instead of the Pact) Currently, the dude is stuck at Alik'r Desert until at least my catblade finishes the Craglorn storyline.
As for the Planemeld storyline, I think I'm going to populate Hollow City 100% and stop there for all my alts. The same goes for Orsinium (i.e. there's always a completionist in me). But these two can wait with Orsinium intended to be a higher priority for my Orc Nightblade alone for storytelling purposes.
A Requiem From Winter Past
It's weird, I know. Someone of my situation and nationality should do more teen-friendly stuff like Crazy Rich Asians and The Fraud Squad. But no, I insisted on following the path of G.R.R "not J.R.R" Martin and Miura Kentaro instead of Kevin "unrelated to Guan Yu unless proven by science" Kwan and Kyla "unrelated to Zhao Yun unless proven by science" Zhao. To set the record straight, there is more than one way for me to know the plot and characters. Due to personal reasons, my information came from the series fandom sites and YouTube videos.
When it comes to appreciating great storytelling, I function like a henjin. I still remember coming across an article on the play Hamilton where it stated that one side of the Potomac criticised it as liberalism while the other side criticised it as not doing enough to highlight racial injustice. As for this henjin, I recognise the fact that dealing with fiction is effectively dealing with human beings since one is the product of the other. Unattainable idealism dictates a must for the other party to agree with you at least 90% of the time while politically incorrect realism says unattainable idealism is literally... well, unattainable. As a henjin, I don't agree with both sides of the Potomac where such criticism was concerned. As a henjin, I don't have issues with Alucard's final battle against Alexander Anderson in Hellsing Ultimate. The occultic theme of Hellsing to me is merely an obstacle I can easily bypass because I know the real theme of the series. In this sense, maybe it's true my brain doesn't function like that of a normal human being. Personally, I believe Japanese storytelling within the darker side seems to have a fondness for Friedrich Nietzsche's famously understated words on monsters and staring at the abyss.
I like Japanese storytelling. I really do. It's not a case of poring over individual works. Rather, it's what I see as the collective. Western storytelling tends to be idealistic and preachy (a funny thing considering the fact Hollywood is doing the same thing as churches every Sunday). I don't mind dealing with preachy plots. To deny it would be calling myself a liar because I really don't mind reading The Chronicles of Narnia. But try to convince me that CRT is a must? Not every revolution was a success because you don't mistake the battle for the war. Ever wondered why voters did the unthinkable by voting the son of a dictator as the new pangulo?
For the Japanese, they can be refreshingly philosophic. It took me years after watching works like Jin-Roh, End of Evangelion (not the 2.0 version), and Kara no Kyoukai to start understanding what I was dealing with. Before that, I was just a moron derided by a toxic educational culture. Even today, I can't reach a clear understanding of the famous last words of Ryougi Shiki's grandfather. Instead, I did a brute force interpretation of what he said. Works like Attack On Titan and Tokyo Ghoul are popular because the likes of Isayama "Hametsu no Hajime" Hajime and Ishida "unrelated to Mitsunari unless proven by science" Sui are native Japanese instead of Japanese living elsewhere. Japan is indeed insular, but it can surprisingly work in both ways instead of one. It's just that we human beings are cursed by the risk of subjective bias, thus the difficulty in seeing the other side of the coin.
Interestingly, this is also a key reason why I enjoy playing ESO. While Neverwinter remains the MMO I've played the longest from 2014 to 2019, ESO is doubtlessly the best MMO I've played so far. This is not to shoot other titles down because you know what people say about taste. The fact is that apart from the Gates of Oblivion arc, I was able to immerse myself entirely into the game. There's something interestingly Japanese about ESO. The storytelling I've grown to appreciate does have shades of the Japanese style here and there. This is also the reason why I'm having high hopes for High Isle. This is the first time I'm saying it for a new episode. Granted people do say Final Fantasy 14 has a better plot. Granted Fire Emblem Heroes and Another Eden do have better storytelling than ESO (Note: Fire Emblem Heroes and Another Eden are NOT MMOs). But we're dealing with actual Japanese, hence an actual Japanese storytelling culture. The thing with storytelling is that you always have to start from your local audience whether you like it or not.
This comes to A Requiem From Winter Past. Truth to be told, I have no hopes of getting it published. The reason why is that the local demand for fantasy is restricted to foreign works. There's something amusing I detect about the term foreign talent: Why is it that foreigners are the ones regaling us with tales of Jon Snow and Guts? You can have a market for fantasy works in Singapore, but you cannot break into the market if you're a Singaporean? I personally find this weird. Is it due to a lack of ambition or have we gotten used to what we've done instead of what we can do? In terms of fantasy works from beyond Singapore, we're very globalised. When it comes to local ambition, we seem to be insular. We're not Japan but part of us functions like Japan.
Clearly, there's no way I'm able to gauge my writing ability with others because what I write has no local market value. But do I regret writing A Requiem From Winter Past? The answer is no. Whether the likes of Kadokawa and Neil "the Guy" Gaiman will take notice of a Singaporean henjin doesn't matter an inch. I'm merely doing something I have an affinity for.
Flushing too much of myself into Jack instead of the opposite
In Tropic Thunder, there's a famous (or infamous depending on your sensitivities) scene involving Ben "not Sasse" Stiller and Robert "I am Iron Man" Downey Jr. In that scene where Simple Jack and an equally simple Hollywood culture caused Sean "I Am Sam" Penn going home empty-handed, Stiller's character mentioned flushing so much of Jack into himself that he couldn't revert to his actual self. Beyond the usage of the R-word reportedly 17 times, I believe we should really have a civilised discourse on how Hollywood romanticises things.
For A Requiem From Winter Past, it's the other way around. Instead of Ben flushing too much Jack into himself, I flushed too much of myself into my characters. It's not deliberate. But was it instinctive? The answer is yes. I still remember a Hong Kong movie I watched while I was either a child or tween. In that movie, the protagonist was a comic artist drawing up images of sex and violence. At the first glance, this is something for moralism to hammer. In reality, this was a person cursed with a dysfunctional childhood where no one understood him. Now let me point out that I don't believe in cheap grace. At the same time, however, I don't believe legalism works.
I realised that there's a part of myself in that person. Not only him but also the likes of Salvador Ramos and Elliot Rodger. Is it a scary thing? This reminds me of what Drizzt Do'Urden saw in his nemesis Artemis Entreri during the events of the novel The Silent Blade by R.A "not rated R" Salvatore. I'm not boasting when I say what Drizzt saw in Artemis was what I see in these people. Like how Drizzt didn't walk Artemis' dark path, I didn't walk the path of these individuals. Like Drizzt seeing part of himself in Artemis nevertheless, I saw part of myself in them.
I don't regret flushing too much of myself into my characters. The reason is that storytelling is what makes us humane, be we the tellers or the audience. Even if someone says storytelling alone isn't enough, I'd insist that storytelling is more of a driving concept than something we can easily see. Even if someone derides fiction because they prefer biographies, my question is this: Is a biography not a form of storytelling as well?
I find it far easier if things can be seen in terms of their nature instead of form. As for the end of this post, I'm going to up some songs synonymous with my characters.
This is for Aeravor
This is for Irlia Eliaden
Current chapters of A Requiem From Winter Past
Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6
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